The Impossible
by piaffe417
Summary: You both knew it would be for better or for worse but it wouldn't be forever.  Post-Loyalty, pre-2011 reunion.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Dear USA Network – Thank you for coming to your senses. It's enabled me to write about Goren and Eames for the first time in a long time. (You are aware, of course, my dear network, that I am only borrowing these characters and that Dick Wolf really shouldn't sue me for that.) Also, USA, could you remind my readers that I don't really 'ship in the traditional way ('cause that's no fun and _way_ too easy) and let them know that they should probably check out some of my previous stories for the inside references listed here? I suggest "Absalom," "Breathe," and "Fortunate" at least. All episodes are fair game, so spoilers abound. Thanks – I'm looking forward to our new episodes in 2011! Love - Piaffe

* * *

_Well, so that is what happens and what has happened and you might as well admit it and now you will never have two whole nights with her. Not a lifetime, not to live together, not to have what people were always supposed to have, not at all… Not time, not happiness, not fun, not children, not a house, not a bathroom, not a clean pair of pajamas, not the morning paper, not to wake up together, not to wake and know she's there and that you're not alone. No. None of that… You ask for the impossible. __**For Whom the Bell Tolls, **_**Ernest Hemingway**

The scrap of paper bearing Hemingway's words traveled in your battered notebook for the better part of seven years, often forced to swim upstream for survival amongst case files, napkins covered in a light coating of spaghetti sauce and hastily-scratched notes, and whatever other bits of information you picked up along the way. For a while, it swam in tandem beside a crumpled slip of shiny paper from a fortune cookie that read "Stop searching for forever. Happiness is right next to you." Ever since you gave that to her a couple of years ago during a rough patch in your partnership, however - a desperate mea culpa delivered in the only way you knew how - the Hemingway passage has traveled alone.

The jury is still out on whether things improved back them because of the fortune itself or because you'd been reminded on that particular occasion not to take her for granted. Either way, the fortune is long gone – and now so is Alexandra Eames. The loss of neither surprises you; you're more astonished to discover that the Hemingway passage is still in your possession.

If only Alex was still there too.

It wasn't that you'd ever really possessed her in the first place, of course (talk about the impossible!), but she'd been there for so long - a constant, daily presence in your life - that you'd spent your first week of unemployment walking around like a sailor trying to adjust to land, so off-kilter that you could have sworn your inner ear was out of balance. Since then, it's taken conscious work to teach yourself to stop looking for her by your side before you cross the street, a task that's been fairly successful. You haven't yet mastered the art of conversation without her, however; you still occasionally pause for too long in a conversation because you're waiting for her to add something and it takes an extra few seconds to realize that you're waiting for a wry remark that won't come.

(She'd think that was hilarious, of course. She'd claim that in all those years you worked together, she'd had to fight to get a word in edgewise and that irony alone makes you want to keep the habit, if only in the barest hope that somewhere she's smiling and she doesn't know why.)

That power that she had to steady you – that power she demonstrated so effortlessly, right from day one - must have been why those particular words from _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ caught your attention on what must have been your third reading of the novel, a reading that occurred somewhere around your second year of partnership with the lovely (yet formidable) Alexandra Eames. Back then, your friendship was new and tenuous (as opposed to the old and tenuous one you had later). Back then, you were still feeling each other out, deciding how much to share and how much to hide from each other – but you recall that you had a quiet sense about her from the start, a sense of being able to trust in her understated strength and blunt (but never cruel) honesty.

That same sense must also have been the one that told you that, no matter what happened between the two of you, your partnership would be for better or worse, but it wouldn't be forever – and perhaps that was what compelled you to copy the passage down and store it in your leather binder for safe keeping. There, it served as an unnecessary reminder that not everyone was guaranteed to receive the standard "American lifestyle" package in their mailbox, that traditional "two-point-five perfect children with a Golden Retriever and a house upstate" standard that so many aspired to. As if you weren't already aware from your upbringing (or lack thereof) that you were never going to get _that_ lucky in your lifetime, you had Hemingway there to remind you every time you looked in your binder.

The unlucky people, you know, are instead relegated to mere moments of normalcy - brief moments of shining and brilliant contentment to be stored up and brought out when the reality of real life rears its head. You know because you, Bobby Goren, are one of those people – and the Hemingway passage, coupled with the simple word "moments" that you scribbled beneath it, was once your daily reminder to conserve those special moments with Alex, to care for and cherish them, and to never take them for granted. Even though you slipped up a few times along the way, Hemingway – and Alex herself - could always get you back on the right track.

Now, of course, you realize that, unlike those other, shorter periods when you felt less than normal and more than beat up by life, _this_ must be the real rainy day occasion you had conserved those moments for: You saved your moments with Alex for the inevitable time when you wouldn't be with her any more.

You told her when you parted, "I'll see you around, I guess" but you both knew that you didn't mean it. The words just happened to sound superior to "Bye then," or "Thanks for the memories," or any of the other three hundred clichéd things that ran through your mind and sounded worse than false. The only thing you were dead certain of in that moment was the fact that "Good bye" was completely unacceptable. "Good bye" was something that Bobby Goren (not Robert Goren, _Bobby_ Goren, because that's what Alex always called you) would never say to Alex Eames.

So "I'll see you around, I guess," it was and it served its purpose. "I'll see you around" was vague enough to be polite and at least left open the possibility that you might bump into each other on the street one day. "I'll see you around" suggested that, if you did have a chance encounter, you'd go for coffee and catch up. "I'll see you around" was nicely open-ended and acknowledged the fact that, though you both live in a city of eight and a half million people, there's always a statistical chance that you could run into her one day.

_Right_.

You're Bobby Goren, which means you know about statistics and knowing about statistics means that you realize full well that it's more likely your friend Earnest had it right all along: _You ask for the impossible._

And what's wrong with that, dammit? What's wrong with hoping for what would amount to a miracle – that your best friend (for even after a year apart that's still how you think of her) could re-enter your life, that you could find a way to stay together this time? Can anyone blame you for holding on to that hope, fruitless as it may seem?

Alex Eames wouldn't. (She could, however, give you a pretty good series of reasons why you were talking through your hat. She'd listen patiently to your argument first, of course, but then she'd painstakingly poke holes in each piece of reason until your argument resembled a sieve more than a bucket and held just as much water.)

But maybe she feels the same way. Without having spoken with her for just over a year, it seems hasty to assume that she hasn't thought about you, isn't wondering where you are and what you're doing. After all, wasn't she always your keeper in some ways? Over the hours, days, _years_ that you spent together, didn't she assume a fighting stance somewhere between you and the rest of the world, shielding you as much as she could from whatever threatened to harm you?

There's a passage from Henry James that has always summed Alex Eames up for you nicely and in the past year, you've had enough time to wade through so much classic literature that you couldn't help but be reintroduced to it. In his short story, _The Beast in the Jungle_, James wrote:

"_It was always open to him to accuse her of seeing him as the most harmless of maniacs, and this, in the long run - since it covered so much ground – was his easiest description of their friendship. He had a screw loose for her, but she liked him in spite of it and was practically against the rest of the world, his kind wise keeper, unremunerated but fairly amused and, in the absence of other near ties, not disreputably occupied."_

You saw her in James' words the first time you read it and you still see her in them now. Despite everything – despite what that happened with Declan and Jo Gage, with Nicole Wallace, the incidents that surrounded your mother's losing battle with cancer, your brother's murder, and your discovery that your biological father was actually a death row serial killer – Alex stood by you. She didn't always do so happily and she sometimes looked as though she'd rather take out her service weapon and put _you_ out of _her_ misery, but she didn't leave. She wavered once or twice – oh yes, you keenly remember the wavering and the fear that it knotted into your stomach - but each time an exit was presented to her, she never took it. Each time the choice came down to you or something easy, she always picked you. You were Goren and Eames, for better or worse, and for that fact alone, you suspect she hasn't easily shaken your presence from her mind.

For better or worse but not forever. That was your relationship in a nutshell.

So what to do about it, Bobby Goren? Genius that you were once purported to be, if you miss her so much and you're convinced that she must be thinking about you, what's to stop you from calling her up and asking her to coffee?

But you know the answer to that question already. As with so many of your investigations, the answer to that question is another question: Can she get past the fact that she was the one to fire you in the end? Can she forget that she was the one to ultimately sever your partnership? Can she at least put it all aside long enough to drink a cup of coffee with you?

Just because you know that it wasn't her idea, that she only fired you under duress and that she quit her own job in protest just moments after your departure doesn't mean that she has gotten over her guilt - even after all this time. Just because you forgave her in that very same moment that she cut the thread between you, just because you kissed her cheek and wrapped her in your arms for the last time doesn't mean that she's accepted the way everything turned out.

You had the unfair advantage, of course. You had time to prepare for the inevitable ending and she didn't - after all, you'd read Hemingway and that was the same as predicting it. It was in writing, right there in your notebook: _Not a lifetime, not to live together, not to have what people were always supposed to have, not at all…_

For better or worse but not forever.

Looking back now, you can even pinpoint the moment when you knew it was all going to unravel. Alex may have been none the wiser, but on the cold night when the two of you stood helplessly by while the body of Captain Danny Ross – _your captain_ - was photographed and his murder scene scanned for clues, you knew it was the beginning of the end. Alex's grief was ultimately what gave it away for you; to see her openly sobbing at a crime scene was the equivalent of a pig taking wing and you knew the moment she leaned into your shoulder and allowed you to put a steadying arm around her that it was about to end. You realized that you needed to memorize the feel of her because the two of you were about to be separated and you'd wanted to pull her to your chest and hold onto her in that moment – not only to allow her sobs a place to land, but so that you could have that memory to take with you, the memory of the two of you standing together against the world – but you knew she'd never allow it. To pull her to your chest would allow her to break down and, though crying at a crime scene was unheard of, Alex Eames was only bent at that point; she wasn't broken. She didn't break until the day she fired you.

That day – the day it ended – you were ready for it and you helped her to pick up the pieces. At least you _think_ you helped her pick up the pieces. You can't know for sure unless you call.

She hasn't moved from her house in Rockaway; that much you do know. (In the old days, you could have used the NYPD database to (illegally, yes) look up that information, but given your present status, you instead resorted to an innocent (and not at all stalker-ish) drive out that way on a Sunday afternoon three weeks ago. She wasn't anywhere to be seen, but her familiar late model white Honda was parked in the drive so you knew she was there.

You could have stopped, you know, but you weren't ready then. You didn't know what to say or how to behave and it would have been awkward. Bad enough that you never know what to do with your hands when you have a conversation and, while she was once used to your unwieldy behavior and odd speech rhythms, you've concluded that it's probably best to call her before just turning up. Give her some warning, some time to prepare – after all, Alex hates surprises. To know her for just five minutes is to know that and you've known her far longer and much less superficially.

But you have her phone number and you can easily call and give her fair warning that you'd like to meet up, catch up, and soak up enough of her presence to sustain you once again. In your current state, you're running low on her steady gazes, wry smiles, and to-the-point observations and you've finally reached the point at which you need to refuel.

More than that, however, if you're truly being honest with yourself (and that's always a good place to start where honesty is concerned), you need to refill that store of hope that the pessimistic part of you threatens to close up for good. You need to restore the hope that Hemingway was perhaps wrong, that maybe you aren't asking for the impossible after all. (Hemingway was kind of a depressed guy, come to think of it, and Henry James was kind of angry – maybe you need to start reading less of them and more modern stuff from Dan Brown or even give Alex's favorite, Janet Evanovich, a try.) Maybe you can "see her around" after all this time and it won't be temporary. Maybe now that the two of you are distanced from your work, you can reconnect in a different – less tenuous, more permanent – way.

You don't need the package that Hemingway described – the house, the morning paper, et cetera. (_The New York Times_ online, anyone?) But now that you've lived for a time without Alex's presence, you're certain of the fact that Heming way had at least one desire on that list that isn't impossible – or at least you don't think it is: "…_not to wake and know she's there and that you're not alone."_

It isn't romance you seek, of course. (Romance is nice, but overrated – particularly when one has spent as much time studying the depravity of the human condition as you and Alex did in your combined careers with the NYPD. Once you've seen what romance makes people capable of, it tends to sour your attitude on it and make a dyed-in-the-wool realist of you.) Instead, you just want that feeling of connection you once had, connection to another human being who understands you (at best) and accepts you (at least). You want to go back to that sense of waking in the morning and knowing that, no matter what else occurs that day, there's one person in the world who cares about what happens to you and whom you care about.

In short, you're tired of being alone, but there's only one person who can fill the space beside you. (It's only big enough for someone who's five foot two anyway.)

It's time, you've concluded. "I'll see you around" is as much in your court as it is in hers and you're going to take a shot. You'll pick up the phone, dial the number you couldn't forget if you wanted to, and invite your old friend/partner/confidant/other half to get a cup of coffee with you.

That's not impossible. _That is what happens and what has happened_ – Hemingway be damned.

* * *

A/N – I really meant to end it here, but then Eames piped up and asked for her own take on things, so look for that to follow shortly. P.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N – Welcome back, faithful readers. I offer you the semi-delayed-but-hopefully-worth-it conclusion to our tale and breathlessly await the return of the dynamic duo to our television airwaves. (Also, please remember that, in my CI universe, Alex Eames loves Cary Grant films.) Enjoy!

* * *

_Well, so that is what happens and what has happened and you might as well admit it and now you will never have two whole nights with her. Not a lifetime, not to live together, not to have what people were always supposed to have, not at all… Not time, not happiness, not fun, not children, not a house, not a bathroom, not a clean pair of pajamas, not the morning paper, not to wake up together, not to wake and know she's there and that you're not alone. No. None of that… You ask for the impossible.  
__**For Whom the Bell Tolls, **_**Ernest Hemingway**

**

* * *

**

You've never liked Ernest Hemingway. Can't stand him really.

To be perfectly, bluntly honest, if you ever decide to dedicate any of your limited free time to reading, there is no way on God's green earth that you're going to pick up a Hemingway novel and while away an afternoon.

It isn't that you hate to read - quite the opposite, in fact. Give you a nice, light Janet Evanovich paperback and send you to the beach and you don't mind; you'll get a little sun that way. A fast-paced Dan Brown novel will mildly amuse you on a rainy day when there aren't any Cary Grant movies on. You'll even take a stab at whatever tome your sister has been shoving your way ever since she found out that it's part of Oprah's book club. (You did, however, stoutly refuse to read _Love in the Time of Cholera._ The title alone was too depressing.)

But if you never read another Hemingway novel for the rest of your life, you're pretty sure you'll leave this world a happy woman.

It's nothing personal against Ernest, of course. (Let's be honest - you don't even know the guy.) It's just that several forced readings of his works - along with so many of those other authors whose reputations render them into Americana - soured your taste on him back in high school. (Subsequently, you also dislike Faulkner and skipped _The Sound and the Fury _and _A Light in August _from Oprah's list as well, despite your sister's prodding.) And even though you re-read _Moby Dick_ back in 2002, that wasn't for fun, it was for a case that you and Goren worked together. (_Only_ a case you worked with Goren would relate to a novel written in 1851; other police investigations tend to focus on boring things - things like physical evidence and cell phone records.)

Bobby Goren loves Hemingway, though. You suppose you're not surprised by that, given his predilection for all manner of things dark and twisted (particularly when "dark and twisted" applies to the human psyche). It isn't just the darkness that attracts Goren to Hemingway, though – you give the man a little military history, some world travel, and a lot of angst-ridden introspection and it's like he's hit the literary trifecta. Bobby admires Hemingway so much, in fact, that for a time, he even carried a particular passage from _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ with him in that battered leather notebook that was practically an extension of his arm. (You know this because you saw it once in the middle of a case back in 2004 when you'd reached into his notebook to retrieve a file.) The scrap of paper caught your eye not because it was remarkable, but because, unlike everything else in the notebook, it was written neatly. All of the other pieces of paper debris were torn and scribbled upon in a Goren-esque shorthand that sometimes even _he_ couldn't decipher, but this piece was cleanly torn from a notepad and the words were articulated in his awkward left-handed scrawl, copied carefully, line by line.

Beneath the excerpt was one word: _Moments._ And you were slightly taken aback by the realization that the passage he'd copied was about you (well, the two of you really) and you realized that, once again, Bobby Goren was fourteen steps ahead of you. In that eerily intuitive way of his, he had summed up your relationship in a mere six lines and one extraneous word, concluding that what the two of you had was something that could only be defined within its moments, not by its content. It wasn't partnership or friendship or love, but a unique combination of all three.

Hemingway's passage also said that it wouldn't last - and damn him anyway for being right.

But those moments! It took a mind like Bobby's to fully comprehend that they not only defined your relationship, but also foreshadowed its inevitable end. And yet you lived within them so fully that you feel as though that was the only time you may truly have been alive. You fear that's the case, in fact. You fear it because everything else that's happened in your life can be quite neatly divided into that which is "BG" (Before Goren) and that which is "AG" (After Goren). But nothing ever quite compares to those moments when you were _with Goren_.

"BG" - in the time right after your wedding and long before you'd ever heard the name Robert Goren - you remember telling Joe that the life of two police officers was a hectic one so, while you'd wholeheartedly married him for better or worse, you hadn't married him for lunch. That served as fair warning that he'd better always make sure he took care of himself when the noon hour rolled around or he'd have to go hungry. Dinners you'd always try to grab together, even when you were working late nights, but lunch was a free for all. Take it or leave it.

The relationship you had with Bobby was different. It wasn't just the shared long hours or the fact that you discovered early on that you had the same tastes in foods, but somehow he became the relationship that was for better, for worse, and _always_ for lunch. It was the relationship that filled the void left when Joe was killed and, as time went on, it became the one that consumed your life. Many days it was for better, some days for worse, and often for lunch and dinner and breakfast too, depending on what you were working on at the time. But it wasn't forever. You knew that and so did Bobby. _You ask for the impossible._

Lately, you kind of wish that maybe it hadn't been so impossible after all.

You wish a lot of things, actually, in this new "AG" space that you occupy. But for the last twelve months, the number one item on that list would have to be the wish that you hadn't been forced into the position of being the one to make the final cut. Sure, you saw the signs a long time before the two of you crash-landed headlong into the end of the road, but never in a million years would you have guessed that the ending would look the way that it did.

…_not to have what people were always supposed to have, not at all… _

The inevitable end was a shock when it presented itself, mostly because it began with the murder of captain of the Major Case squad, Danny Ross. _Your _captain. (Or perhaps more literarily to paraphrase Whitman: Captain! Y_our_ captain!) You stood beside Bobby in the chill of the night air at the crime scene, impotent and confused, and somehow you knew that Ross wasn't the only death that had occurred that night. Your captain had shielded the two of you from those higher up on the NYPD food chain for some time - in much the same manner that you always played protective mama bear to Bobby's wayward cub over the years; with Ross gone, however, the two of you wouldn't be able to withstand the onslaught of administrative debris that would come your way.

_Well, so that is what happens and what has happened and you might as well admit it…_

You cried at a crime scene for the first time that night. All of the horrors you witnessed on the job, all of the inhumanity and loss and waste you'd seen and managed to remain stoic in the face of and, all of a sudden, you cried for Danny Ross of all people. You didn't even like him at first meeting, but that night you couldn't help but cry for him and for his two suddenly fatherless sons. You couldn't help but cry also for Dr. Elizabeth Rodgers, for you knew exactly how she felt to lose the man she loved in such violent fashion.

Mostly, though, you couldn't help but cry for the end of "GorenandEames," the great team who were for better, for worse, and for lunch – but not forever.

Bobby saw it too. He didn't say so (of course) but he refused to look you in the eye which was always the first sign that he was trying to shield you from something. (In all of your years of partnership, you'd learned to read him with much more clarity than you ever applied to a Hemingway novel). So on that chilly New York night, amidst the crime scene chaos, swirling lights, and din of police personnel, you cried at a crime scene for the first time and the weight of Bobby Goren's arm wrapped itself comfortingly around your shaking shoulders with a hopeful reassurance that neither of you believed in.

Admit it, Alexandra. Admit that at that moment, you wanted nothing more than to bury your face in Bobby's flannel-clad chest, sob away all of your fears, and hide yourself from the world. He would have let you – you know that - but you didn't try. You held back because you were afraid - afraid to break, afraid that there might be too many pieces to pick up if that happened. The last time you fell apart was when Joe died and it took you so long to come back from that tragedy that, even though Bobby was undoubtedly the one person capable of helping you to reassemble yourself, you refused to let go. You chose instead to get on with business - the business of investigating your captain's murder - in the hope of staving off the inevitable end of "GorenandEames."

You refused to break down at Ross's crime scene and, in the end, you and Bobby both ended up shattered – only this time, neither of you stuck around to help the other pick up the pieces. Behave ironically much, Alex?

"I'll see you around, I guess," were his final words to you. A long hug, a kiss on the cheek that was as tender as that of a smitten schoolboy, and then he'd turned and departed Ross' office, shutting the door quietly behind his solid form. (Arguably, it was actually _your_ office at the time, but since you quit your job in protest a few moments later, you figure it never really fell into your possession. The office was in escrow; you were just borrowing it.)

"I'll see you around" was Bobby's way of trying to keep the thread between you intact but still keep some boundaries in place. "I'll see you around" was not as final as "good-bye," but open-ended so as to not commit either one of you to picking up said thread within a particular time frame – or at all. "I'll see you around" was typical Goren - his convoluted way of releasing you from any obligation you'd felt to him based solely on your years of partnership and nothing more. _Not time, not happiness, not fun…_

"I'll see you around" was Bobby's way of saying good-bye to you without actually uttering the words.

Knowing this about him, you should have called long before now. You admit that. You meant to – you really did - and once you even planned to (marked it on the calendar and everything!), but for one reason or another, it just hasn't happened and you suppose that it's because you're afraid. You're afraid of what you'll discover on the other end of the line when Bobby picks up.

Pathetic, isn't it? You, Alex Eames, a once and always formidable policewoman who used to carry a gun and stare down violent criminals on a regular basis are afraid to pick up a little bitty phone. You're afraid of finding answers to your questions where once you used to seek them with a vengeance. You're afraid because you don't want to learn that the Bobby Goren you used to be able to read like a book is lost to you forever.

He'll answer the phone if you call, that much you know. He won't have vanished physically and, even if he did, a man of that size and stature who holds a subscription to _Smithsonian Magazine_ tends to stand out wherever he goes. But he's mastered other methods of invisibility over time, you know. His odd quirks, awkward pauses, and encyclopedic knowledge all serve to conceal the real Bobby – the one that you were privileged to get to know, the one you call your friend – from the rest of the world. What will you do if you call and learn that your Bobby is gone, hidden away from you as though you're strangers?

Such a discovery would devastate you, you realize.

Yet as those thoughts flit through your mind, you chide yourself: Come on, Alex – isn't it highly egotistical of you to think that Bobby Goren has stopped functioning simply because you're not there every morning with him? (…_not a clean pair of pajamas, not the morning paper…_) Is it _impossible_ for the man to begin his day without checking in with you first? Was that what Hemingway meant by "You ask for the impossible?"

Hardly.

But look at your own mornings these days. Be honest - it's not only the Skittles for breakfast you miss (definitely a change for the better), but a pair of brown eyes searching for yours across a bustling bullpen. It was the thousands of shared morning commiserations and cups of bad One PP coffee that rooted the friendship that the two of you shared, that gave you a sense of once more having someone to stand up with you against the world. If you're wondering to whom _he_ looks now, you'd better ask yourself that same question.

Once, in a fit of rage and frustration after he'd worked undercover without letting you know, you fumed at Bobby: "I get it. You're the genius; I just carry your water. Right?" And, though you meant to wound him, to cut as deeply as you'd been cut by his omission, later you admitted to yourself that, not only had you spoken the truth, but you were okay with the way things were. You really didn't mind carrying the water.

It wasn't a slight against your own abilities, of course. You never doubted your skills as a police officer or detective – heck, _you_ were the senior partner when Goren transferred to Major Case, despite all appearances to the contrary – but though your record was solid and sound when the two of you were paired up, it never really shone either. _He_ made you shine. He made you look good and it was your job as his partner to return the favor - which you did. It was always a balanced ballet between the two of you; over the years you played straight to his crazy, harping wife to his harangued husband, bad cop to his good, and good cop to his bad.

Two halves of the same whole. Yin and yang. GorenandEames.

So when you'd stood in Ross's office on that last day, tears streaming down your cheeks, you tried your best to tell him that. What came out was: "You're the best; you always will be." And he was. He was the best detective you'd ever seen, hands down, but that was only part of what you meant. He was also the best friend you'd ever had or (now you know) _will_ ever have. Who else could have stood there while you took his badge, gun, career, and _purpose_ away from him and been more concerned for your feelings on the matter than he was for his own? Only Bobby Goren.

That does it. You're tired of Ernest Hemingway and his stance on what is and is not possible. Moreover, you're tired of Bobby's seeming belief in Hemingway's veracity on the matter. You and Bobby proved time and again that the seemingly impossible was merely laziness on the part of normal people. They simply weren't trying hard enough; it was that simple. Thus, "impossible" was not a word that the two of you ever used, particularly where your friendship was concerned. In all that time together, in all those moments, Bobby taught you to believe that the impossible was entirely plausible – so why should now be any different?

The two of you were defined by your moments. You know that – and not just because your partner wrote that word beneath a Hemingway passage and carried it around in his snotebook for years. You know it instead because those moments are what you treasure from your days in the Major Case squad, those moments of pure connection between you and the best friend you'd ever had. And even though Ernest Hemingway didn't believe that two people could make it happen - _Not a lifetime, not to live together, not to have what people were always supposed to have…_ - what did he know about the two of you? Nothing, that's what. Maybe you weren't ever going to have what _normal_ people were supposed to have, but nothing about you and Bobby was ever normal to begin with. Normal is boring. Normal is for people that haven't seen what you've seen and experienced what you've experienced.

You don't want romance (too messy) but you do want connection. In order to have that, you need Bobby Goren back in your life. So ask him to coffee, Eames. Pick up the phone, dial his number, and tell him that the two of you are long past "I'll see you around" and he needs to stop driving by your house like a stalker and instead meet you downtown somewhere. (That will really get his attention because he probably doesn't realize you've seen him.) Then when you get him caffeinated and you've caught up on each other's lives, tell him that Ernest Hemingway was wrong; **nothing** is impossible – especially not for GorenandEames.

And after that, you can go out and make some new moments. Together.

FIN


End file.
